Roses at Jumeirah Essex House.

“Florals? For spring? Ground breaking.” We hear you, Miranda Priestly. But strolling through a half dozen or so hotel lobbies, we couldn’t resist whipping out a camera and celebrating spring with flowers.

In the early and mid 20^th century a flower shop was a must at large urban hotels. Besides eye-catching blooms for the lobby, weddings and parties on the premises, the shop sent flowers to guest rooms on behalf of friends and associates (guests checked in for longer than a night or two in the years before air travel).  The shop also stocked the boutonnieres and corsages that were the mark of the well dressed.

Such shops are a rarity today, but the custom of dressing the lobby with fresh blooms lives on. As New York’s economy has revived, we’re seeing hotels all over town springing for big bouquets delivered each week.

Here’s a look at what’s blooming in lobbies around the city.

Ritz Carlton Central Park.

Twin urns bursting with spring blooms flank the entry to the lobby sitting room at the Ritz Carlton New York Central Park. The flowers sit at the top of a pair of tall pedestals, so look up as you enter.

The round glass-topped Regency table in the entry alcove at the Plaza holds the most-photographed hotel buds in town. (We waited our turn next to three other photographers to snap these beauties.) The Plaza won’t let you take pictures once you enter the lobby, but the flowers aren’t as abundant once you get past this table, either.

The Pierre.

Prior to the Pierre‘s 2009 refurbishment you could have drinks and afternoon tea in the Rotunda. No more (and we miss that). But this windowless signature room at the Pierre is now a flower-lover’s haven, with tall, flashy blooms on view year round.  The murals enveloping the room are the work of Edward Melcarth (1914-1973), who painted them in 1967 (which explains the man in the Nehru jacket and the woman resembling Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis with two children).

The Pierre.

A single vase from the Pierre Rotunda table.

Jumeriah Essex House.

At some hotels flowers indicate a special occasion. Not so the Jumeirah Essex House. The round mirrored table in the center of the lobby is piled high with flowers all year.

Ace Hotel.

The Ace sells fresh flowers in the lobby vestibule (sometimes). So small surprise big buds are usually on view amidst the laptops and coffee cups. (Black makes such a dramatic backdrop.)

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Paris on the Hudson.

White walls, black moldings, sash windows swathed in white curtains that kissed the floor – yes, yes, yes. But what pumped our pulse was the claw-footed bathtub parked nonchalantly next to the polished mahogany writing desk. Proust would have felt at home here once he figured out how to work the TV and iHome docking station.

An amiable porter in a Thom Brown-inspired suit, his long hair pulled into a curly topknot, had accompanied us to our room. Though able and willing to carry our modest overnight bag, we were glad he was there to show us around. The room was oddly confusing.

In the entry, painted black and no bigger than a gasp, a stack of leather trunks hid the minibar

The washstand next to the stall shower.

and safe. The stall shower stood demurely behind a heavy blue brocade screen planted opposite the king-size bed.  On the wall next to the shower a mirror in a gilded frame hung above the washstand.

But where was the toilet? For a heartbeat we wondered if we’d made a horrid mistake and it was down the hall. (At $325  for an Atelier room, we expected full facilities.) But no. Our guide turned a brass knob to open the screen’s cleverly camouflaged door and – voila — a pint-size water closet appeared, with black walls, a dual-flush Geberit toilet and a fetching little sink in the corner.

Long before it opened in late March, the NoMad Hotel beamed out across the radar. There’s the pedigree. The hotel is the first born of the Sydel Group headed by Andrew Zobler, a former partner at Andre Balazs Properties and head of acquisitions for the Starwood Group.

Sixth floor atelier.

Commandeering the restaurant are chef Daniel Humm and restaurateur Will Guidara, the team behind Eleven Madison Park.  And as the first American outpost of Paris’s Maison Kitsune, a mash-up of smart fashion and cool rock, the shop doesn’t even take a pass at typical hotel sundries.

But the hotel’s appearance, embracing classic decorative flourishes rarely seen in

Rub-a-dub-dub.

contemporary New York boutique hotels like opulent textiles, oriental rugs and polished mahogany furniture, is what makes the NoMad feel original.

Taking their cues from the boisterous elegance of the century-old building’s Beaux Arts exterior,  the developers tapped Jacques Garcia, a French architect and interior designer known for conjuring atmospheric Parisian properties like the Hotel Odeon Saint Germain, and turned him loose on the former office building. The result: a new interior that looks old, or at least old the way 21st-century guests might imagine it. (Anyone who has visited Paris’s Carnavalet Museum knows Proust didn’t sleep in a king-size bed.)

In the lobby.

The lobby sets the mood with a pair of dark, textile-enriched parlors suspended in time somewhere between Edith Wharton and Scott and Zelda. Heavy gold fringe skirts the wildly patterned velvet sofas and club chairs. The big window looks ready for a retro night on the town, dressed in pleated white fabric shades and swag curtains that channel Fortuny. But the rooms are just an elaborate scene setter — and a pass-through where guests, many flanked by wheelies, perch while waiting for a taxi or dinner companion.

After checking in – a breeze — we asked the ponytailed porter if there was someplace to curl up with a book outside of our room. “There’s the Library, but that’s mainly for drinks,” he

The TV across from the bed.

said. Ah yes, we’d had drinks there with a friend the previous week. It’s delightful, a fantasy library with books marching up the double-height walls and a curved library stair. The cocktails were appealing, too, if pricey. But unless you order a drink or afternoon pastry, which we didn’t want, it’s not a place to hang out. (Our guess: the NoMad wants to avoid turning  the Library into a high-end Starbucks, like the lobby at the Ace Hotel, a block away, with laptoppers camping out for hours.)

Our room, not surprisingly, proved ideal for holing up. The Frette bathrobe was thick and comfy. The pillow-top bed, dressed in crisp Sferra sheets and backed by a handsome brown leather headboard, was the full Goldilocks – not too soft, not too hard. And the reclaimed maple floor, polished to a high-beam gloss, was, in a word, gorgeous, as was the pale Herit rug that warmed it.

Amusing details appeared almost everywhere we gazed — the painted metal waste-basket,  a stylish take on an Edwardian coal bin; the square bedside tables enveloped in black velvet; the shallow polished mahogany bookcase that supported the flatpanel LG TV.

NoMad Restaurant.

The TV, unfortunately, wasn’t so amusing. We could only get a handful of the channels and nothing premium. (The words No Signal are downright hostile.) A call to the front desk brought an engineer to our door within ten minutes. He fiddled with the set, said he’d adjust the it from a master control, then paid us a second visit, all in vain. Long story short: the front desk offered to move us to another room the next day (too bad, we were only there for one night).

So in our Proustian Parisian flat we did low-tech Proustian things. We took a bubble bath gazing out the window (and up at the Empire State Building, its topknot lighted green). We read into the wee hours, curled up in a distressed leather chair straight out of a London supper club. We slept like a log.

And the next morning we ate a big breakfast – an excellent, if pricey, Crab Benedict ($22) with good, strong coffee. In the dining room, another glamorous fabric-swathed lair with chairs upholstered in gold silk brocade, a steel gray sky beamed through the skylight. That channeled Paris, too.

The NoMad Hotel, 1170 Broadway at 28^th Street, New York, NY 10001; 212 212 796 1500. Rooms start at $295 (and quickly escalate in price).

Hyatt Hotels aims to change that and lots more. This week the company unveiled Food. Thoughtfully Sourced. Carefully Served, a soup to nuts food philosophy that in essence overhauls the entire food and beverage service for all Hyatt full service brands. The triple-tined aim is

Healthy and sustainably sourced, too.

to serve food that is locally sourced, harvested from sustainable sources and healthy to boot.

As you know if you’ve visited the restaurants at Hyatt’s New York City properties including the Grand Hyatt, healthy, locally sourced offerings have nibbled their way onto the menus – and into Hyatt culture — for a while. (The Andaz Wall Street even hosts a twice-weekly farmers market during warm months.)

This week’s announcement spells out the details and widens the reach to all full-service Hyatt hotels.

Food. et al ‘s  manifesto – presented on a page garnished with images of picture-perfect produce (locally sourced, we presume) – is built around three components, or pillars, to use Hyatt speak – healthy choices (controlled portions, natural ingredients, vegetarian and gluten-free); environmentally conscious sourcing (sustainable seafood, recycling programs, on-property chef’s gardens) and support for local communities (at least five local ingredients on every menu).

To up the ante Hyatt announced an affiliation with Partnership for Healthier America to hold the company accountable for nutritional improvements. The goal: cut sodium, sugar and calories by 20 percent over the next decade.

Given the hotel industry’s competitive instincts – remember the impact of Weston’s Heavenly Bed? – we predict healthy food will be the next hotel megatrend from California to the Carolinas. And not a moment too soon.

Though gleeful to be first at the finish line (this time), Hyatt representatives say they expect – and want – others in the industry to follow.  One reason is the dearth of suppliers for sustainable, organic and additive-free food. “If we can get more hotels on board, prices can come down,” says Susan Santiago, vice-president food and beverages, Hyatt North America.

Sustainably sourced scallops.

Hyatt’s food overhaul was in the works for two years. In response to demand from guests, Hyatt tested the waters, tweaking the menus at a sampling of hotels across the country.  At breakfast, guests had a choice of conventional eggs and sausage or cage-free eggs and hormone/antibiotic-free sausage at a slightly higher price. A conventional beef burger and a pricier grass-fed version were also offered.

If 10 percent of the guests opted for the premium foods, Hyatt planned to drop conventional meat and eggs from its menus, Santiago says. The final tally? 30 percent ordered the healthy fare. Case closed. Look for cage-free organic eggs and Neuske’s natural bacon on your breakfast plate, if you check into a Hyatt.

Carlton's star turn.

Over the course of its short season, the actors were shown sipping drinks at the Bryant Park Hotel‘s Cellar Bar, clicking cocktails at the Royalton, downing drinks at W Times Square and ambling past the pink neon marquee of Times Square’s infamous Hotel Carter (you’ll notice they didn’t go inside that one).

But the bright shining moment for a New York hotel so far was the season’s penultimate episode, which aired last night. In it the cast road tests Bombshell, their Marilyn Monroe musical, in Boston. But the scenes of the nameless hotel where the cast congregates were filmed in the lobby and cabaret bar at the Carlton Hotel in New York, the stylish hotel on the corner of Madison Avenue and 29th Street.

The Carlton, which posed for its close-up in March, looks terrific albeit more generic than in

Does this look like Boston?

real life.  Though audiences see its distinctive wrought iron stair rails, the cameras sidestep the Edith Wharton-era photo mural behind the waterfall, a giveaway detail that places the hotel firmly in Yankee rather than Red Sox country.

The Carlton is the latest in a growing list of New York City hotels with recent star turns in television shows and movies.  The Empire Hotel is a regular backdrop on Gossip Girl.  Last year’s season finale of Glee unfolded at the Intercontinental New York Times Square, where the bar briefly added spiked Slurpies to the drinks menu.  A pivotal scene in the movie Shame played out at The Standard.  Tower Heist was filmed at the Trump International New York Hotel & Towers. And the Waldorf=Astoria’s Hall of Mirrors appeared in The Adjustment Bureau, along with Matt Damon and Emily Blunt.

Most hotels alert their Facebook fans when a filming takes place. Still, the best way to learn where a film crew is about to descend is On Location Vacations, which posts daily listings of on-site filmings throughout the country.

As for Smash, we plan to tune in to the season finale airing Monday, May 14, in the hopes of seeing more than just actors.

At first glance, LobbyFriend, a new travel app that lets guests connect with others registered at the hotel, seems aimed squarely at the first group. But LobbyFriend is nimble. Even if you’re in the second camp keep reading. This app could be for you, too.

TRYP lobby -- home to LobbyFriend.

The app — available on iPhones, Androids, Blackberries (coming in June), the new Nokia Lumia 900 (in the works) and in a web version – made its debut at Manhattan’s new TRYP New York Times Square South and is up and running at some 130 properties around the world. To learn more, we talked with Jason Ayoub, a Canadian chartered accountant with an entrepreneurial streak who co-founded the company.

The idea LobbyFriend grew out of Ayoub’s experiences traveling for work. “I was alone a lot, and it gets very boring,” he says. “The hotel is full, but the restaurant is empty and there’s no one in the lobby.” When staying at business hotels, he missed the social atmosphere of hostels, where guests hang out in the lounge and chill, trading stories, chatting over meals and cultivating acquaintances.

“I remember a place more through the connections I make and the experience I have than the building,” he says. “That’s the connection we wanted to produce with LobbyFriend.”

 The app Once you download the app to a smartphone, you can access LobbyFriend at any

TRYP -- another view of LobbyFriend's first lobby.

hotel that offers it. The service is available only for the duration of your stay, be it a night or a month. At check-in, you’re given a postcard with a PIN number that connects you to the hotel’s social network and insures privacy; the only information on it is your name and check-out date, Ayoub says. “When guests leave, the PIN is useless, and they’re removed from the hotel network without a trace.” You receive a new PIN each time you check into a LobbyFriend hotel.

The profile Guests who download the app fill out a profile similar to Facebook that goes up on the hotel’s network during their stay.  Name, a photo, gender, city, schools attended,

TRYP bar -- LobbyFriend's here, too.

current job — “you can put up anything that will help people find a common interest to break the ice,” Ayoub says.  You provide as much or as little information as you wish. A tab allows you to scan the list of others staying at the hotel including staff members with profiles.

The uses Pretty obvious for guests who want to meet others at the hotel. Ayoub says a popular use for the service is as a message board. “You can post requests to share a cab to the airport, stage a meet-and-greet at the hotel bar, recruit a crowd for karaoke or see if anyone has ideas for where to shop.”

But those who prefer not to socialize can also benefit. Hotels can use the network to post announcements, like the evening’s dinner specials, or alert guests to deals, like an impromptu happy hour in the bar, a discount at the spa or a pair of Lion King tickets that just became available. The feed is constant, so guests can check it when they’re out and about in the city.  “If you’re downtown and want to find a nearby comedy club, you can ping the hotel,” Ayoub says.

Coming soon: LobbyFriend city guides guests can access from their smartphones.

Hotels have the final say in how open the network will be. “We have certain brands who want to use it only for their conferences, connecting the corporate event,” Ayoub says. A hotel in Dubai plans to use it for wedding parties. And some intend to run it as one-way message board programmed by the hotel.

The best news? LobbyFriend is free. And that sounds downright friendly to us.

Not in April. Last month’s ten top Hollywood movies – we don’t keep track of the other kind – viewed in hotel rooms throughout the nation were identical to the top ten screened in New York City hotel rooms. The order varies a bit as you scroll down the list. ( Man on a Ledge, which is set in New York, scored higher in NYC hotel rooms than We Bought a Zoo, which is not.)

As always, the stats come from LodgeNet, which supplies in-room entertainment to more than 1.6 million hotel rooms throughout the US.

New York

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

The Grey

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Contraband

Chronicle

Man On A Ledge

Underworld Awakening

Safe House

We Bought A Zoo

The Nation

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

The Grey

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Contraband

Safe House

Underworld Awakening

We Bought A Zoo

Chronicle

Man On A Ledge

Well read.

Libraries and libations go together like gin and tonic. Or perhaps we should say like Islay scotch, Chambery Blanc vermouth, South India Solera sherry and crème de cacao, the makings of the Old Alhambra cocktail we had in the Library at the new NoMad Hotel.

The NoMad’s is one of the most exquisite hotel libraries we’ve ever seen – and we make a point of seeking out hotel libraries. Polished wood shelves, an oriental rug warming the hardwood floor, a sleek curved library stair leading to the second floor of books, strong WiFi – it’s the prototypical private library reimagined for 21^st-century tastes.

The content is as dazzling as the setting. Sidestepping the prevailing trend of outfitting a hotel library with books from one publisher – or color-coding a random selection of bulk-purchased hardcover books – the NoMad’s wood-paneled room looks like the lair of a voracious bibliophile with wide-ranging tastes.

If Alfred Hitchcock was redoing North by Northwest, he might set the library scene, where a

Old Alhambra -- after a sip

pair of murderous traitors force-feed bourbon to Cary Grant, in a room like this.

Books are arranged according to subject, and choices are amusing. Cookbooks, eating up the wall behind a pair of curved arm chairs, each with just one arm, range from The Martha Stewart CookBook and several volumes from the Barefoot Contessa to Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky. A dishy, unauthorized biography of Nelson Rockefeller occupies a shelf with Robert Caro-esque political biographies and histories in a different area.

We could while away hours here, but looks aside, the Library is a lounge serving morning breakfast breads, afternoon tea pastries and drinks after 5. Your chances of perusing the stacks or curling up with a laptop and hanging out, as at the nearby Ace, are slim.

Bookish.

We stopped by for drinks in early evening. As befit the setting, the black-leather-bound drinks menu provided ample reading material – a page of snacks and nine pages of cocktails, wines and beers as carefully curated as the books.

Though not Dewey-decimalized, drinks, concocted by ace mixologist Leo Robitschek of Eleven Madison, are categorized – classics, light spirited, dark spirited, apertifs, alchohol free, glasses of red, glasses of white, rose’ on tap, you get the idea. There’s even a Bartender’s Choice promising to “tailor a cocktail to your tastes.”

We loved the titles – Start Me Up, Crooked Kilt, Paris is Burning, Hot Lips. We definitely didn’t choose Old Alhambra ($15) for its name, but it was a winner, smooth and peaty, thanks to the Islay scotch.

Our companion opted for the house brown ale, Brooklyn Brewery’s Nomad Le Poulet on

The house draught.

draught ($8), brewed specially for the hotel. He liked it, pronouncing it rich with a touch of bitter. A large man in the group at the next table liked it, too. He was on his third when we left.

The NoMad Hotel, 1170 Broadway and 28^th Street; 212 796-1500.

Greening the roof.

In observation of Earth Day (and Month), we pause for a quick pulse check on how New York City hotels are doing on the green front.

This month the city’s largest hotel, the 1,981-room New York Hilton, took a big stride towards energy efficiency.  As befits a big hotel, the gesture is grand.  On view is the hotel’s new green roof occupying 16,000 square feet atop a fifth floor setback. The garden, consisting of a vast array of sedum harvested at an upstate farm, isn’t open to guests. But it offers a glimpse of nature for hotel guests on the 53^rd Street side of the building who happen to gaze down from their windows.

More important, the plants are on board to do what roots and foliage do naturally – absorb airborne pollutants, deflect solar radiation and reduce the thermal load.  The predicted result: less carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere and less energy required to keep the building cool.

In addition, the hotel is installing a Cogeneration System, which should be running at full tilt this summer. The environmentally friendly system powered by natural gas will provide more than 50 percent of the hotel’s electrical power and more than 40 percent of steam for heating and hot water.

At 1,750 kW, Hilton’s Cogeneration system will be the largest at a New York City hotel, the hotel says. The goal: to reduce the hotel’s carbon footprint by more than 30 percent, the equivalent of removing more than 6,000 mid-size cars from the road.

Though much of the progress towards energy efficiency is on view at newer hotels, where it is easier and less costly to implement changes from the ground up, older hotels, like the 49-year-old Hilton, are hardly in the dust.

At the 86-year-old Intercontinental New York Barclay, 100 percent of the energy comes from clean, renewable wind power. Last summer the hotel installed a lavish roof garden, complete with four beehives, to supply greens for the kitchen and cut back on the carbon dioxide released sent into the atmosphere.

The Waldorf=Astoria recently installed a beehive on the 20^th floor roof and will soon have an accompanying garden providing food for the hotel’s kitchens.

And in Chelsea, the Desmond Tutu Center, a 60-room hotel housed in a landmarked 19^th-century building uses a geothermal system to heat and cool the rooms.

Among newer properties, the three-year-old Crosby Street Hotel is at the top of the heap with greendom’s highest accolade, Gold LEED Certification for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

Other newish hotels with green cred are the Element New York Times Square West, Andaz Wall Street, Aloft Harem and the brand-new Conrad New York, to name a few.

Knave -- as it was.

Talk about a double whammy. First came the news that Le Parker Meridien’s new next-door neighbor will be a new 296-room boutique hotel.  Then yesterday morning the new neighbor invaded Parker Meridien’s turf.

As guests sipped espresso and nibbled croissants at the hotel’s stylish Knave cafe just before noon, liquid concrete from the new building broke through the wall and flooded the room.

The “concrete lava” was up to a foot deep and moved tables and chairs, according to witness reports in The New York Post.  As stunned guests fled, construction workers rushed in with wheelbarrows to remove the invasive material.

In a statement, Steven Pipes, President of the Jack Parker Corporation, said that there were no injuries and that the damage hadn’t spread to the rest of the hotel. “FDNY was called into action immediately,” he said.

Knave opened in 2010 in what was once a public breezeway leading to the hotel. Wildly romantic with red velvet curtains, towering mirrors and carved wood settees it looked like set for a production of Romeo & Juliet and was a smart addition to the hotel’s other eateries, Norma’s, the baroque breakfast restaurant, and Burger Joint, a popular hamburger hang out.

For now, Knave remains closed and no date has been set for when Knave will reopen, according to hotel spokeswoman.